Night Terror
by CardboardCreative
Summary: Gwen has a nightmare of her own. Morgana/Gwen.


Night Terror

Disclaimer:** I do not own the rights to Merlin; I do suspect that those are for BBC. But make no mistake, the BBC shall one day be under my thrall.  
**Note:** So, this was originally intended to be a friendship piece. But when I was finished with it, it did not embody friendship as much as it was a hailstorm of innuendo and implication. And thus, we have some suitable Morgana/Gwen. There are no spoilers. I have no beta, so feel free to comment on anything that is grammatically or characteristically out of place.**  
-

Sometimes, Gwen forgets to dream. She supposed that her Lady's nightly temperaments encompassed enough for the both of them. She supposed that it was not out of her realm of ability to count how many dreams her Lady might have in a night.

She would huddle in Morgana's vanity chair, nudged carefully across the stone floor so as not to cause commotion, and settle at the bedside. With a blanket across her shoulders and her hands in the crook of her knees, Gwen would watch the movement of her Lady in sleep.

She discovered in her studies that it was only during nightmares that Morgana moved. Only when the things behind her eyelids were horrors Gwen daren't ask to be dictated, did Morgana's body writhe and her hands claw at the sheets. And, almost every morning since her employment, Gwen was inclined to remake the shambolic linens.

She would have woken the noble in such a state, of course, if Morgana knew that Gwen was actually there. She would have woken her if it were not for the captivating crease in Morgana's slumbering brow that suggested more than what was there; as if, in her unconscious state, Morgana was erudite to Gwen's presence. After all, nothing was ever said of the moved chair in the morning, still sitting quaintly out of place at the bedside.

It was when Gwen first came into her Lady's employ that she experienced lavish dreams. She envisioned materials; of silk and velvet and cotton, profligately dyed in emerald, crimson, and cerulean. Of these dreams, which were no longer often, Gwen remembered most the almost transparent lavender that made obsolete the richness of the silk and the velvet. It floated both aimless and with intention, like water, to dance across the materials and ascend into the clear sky.

Serene upon awakening, Gwen once told her Lady of the reoccurring theme, since Morgana was quite the connoisseur on the subject. Morgana had offered one of her enigmatic half-smiles and told Gwen that she was probably dreaming of herself.

And the dreaming stopped altogether when Gwen's father died. The young handmaid supposed an empty house was not the ideal environment for cultivating dreams, but she did wonder why she had yet to meet her father's gaze once she closed her eyes. Instead, she went from evening till morning in simple intervals, and was invested enough in Morgana's night terrors that it was as though Gwen dreamed them herself.

On this night, however, it was finally Gwen's turn. Slumped over in her chair and with head hanging so that her chin rested on her chest, the young maid's eyes rolled frantically behind their lids.

_  
She dreamt again of the opulent materials in their royal hues, their eminence as strong as they were indulgently coloured. She dreamt that strewn across the material were rubies in the shape of poison berries, plump and ripe. The beak of a great black bird invasively searched out the rubies, and, as if they really were berries, popped them between the razor edges of its jaws. And once they were broken, the rubies bled._

They bled a great deal more than the capacity reality would have allowed. The great black bird had gone to great pains to peck the insides out of each gemstone, and so blood filled its beak, stained its inky feathers, and pooled in the silks and velvets to mar their colours. They bird pecked and pecked, even after each ruby was demolished, until it gnawed itself a river of blood, and came to float upon it.

And then, faceless hands grabbed the bird and squeezed. The great black bird spread its enormous wingspan and splashed around in the river of blood. The hands, now spattered in red, did nothing but dig its nails deeper into the great bird. The noise that emanated from the thing was otherworldly. The great black bird opened its beak and let out low, gargled moans and high pitched, strangled squawks. The sounds were incessant, and the dream went on this way for some time.

Somewhere between the bird's captor drawing blood from the feathered being, and the bird lashing back and stripping as much flesh from the hands as it could, the terrible noise softened. It began lightly, and then progressed into a warm murmur.

Gwen felt pressure on her shoulders, and opened her eyes to meet Morgana's in the dark. The moonlight spilling in through the window lit her Lady's pale eyes and revealed that they were shadowed in worry. The Lady was not properly attired; her nightclothes were flimsy, but unkempt- as if she had just darted out of bed.

"Gwen," she was gently prompting, "Guinevere."

The maid realized that the gentle murmur in her dream was her Lady's voice. She opened her eyes and gasped in air. Her hands felt numb, and she looked down at them to see that she was white knuckled from gripping the chair.

"Was I dreaming?" she asked her voice heavy with sleep.

Morgana nodded solemnly, and smoothed out Gwen's hair with her hands. Yet to pry her fingers from the chair arms, her Lady gently did it for her. "You haven't dreamt in a while, have you, Gwen."

Gwen nodded in agreement, as it was more of an observation than the question. Morgana knew. Somehow, she always knew.

"I'm sorry that I woke you," Gwen mumbled, groggily untangling herself from the hard, woollen sheet. She stood from the chair and fumbled to clean up in her half-asleep state. "I should- I should just let you be…"

Morgana reached out and grabbed the wrist of Gwen's busied arm, and the woollen sheet fell onto the floor. "What did you dream of?" she asked, her voice even as a whisper in the way Gwen found most welcoming.

Gwen's wrist went limp in Morgana's grasp, and she lifted her other hand to rub sleep from her eyes. She gazed out of the window, the glass closed and casting patterns across the stone floor. The moonlight was ethereal and cast deep shadows, outlining their faces and haunting the furniture. It couldn't have been anywhere close to sunrise; the girl felt as though she had endured centuries of that awful screaming.

"You certainly were thrashing about," the Lady went on, her eyes fond and her grasp no more than a touch, though she persisted to hold onto Gwen. "You made quite a ruckus."

"Oh, I'm sorry," groaned the maid, slightly embarrassed for having been caught in a vulnerable state. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"No; no apology taken. Do you imagine I'm the type to not understand a nightmare? Gwen," Morgana tugged on the girl's arm, "come sit."

Gwen flashed Morgana a nervous smile, and attempted to smooth out her dress before sitting. "I'm sorry that I woke you," she mumbled, letting herself sink into the soft linens, and leaning her head on Morgana's shoulder. "Were _you_ dreaming?"

Morgana let out a small sigh of air, "I don't think so."

"Oh," the maid murmured into the material of Morgana's nightclothes.

"You know, I'm not a Queen, I needn't a night watch," the Lady went on, speaking softly so as not to wheedle Gwen into severe wakefulness.

"I just thought maybe-" Gwen's thoughts were interrupted by a deep yawn that escaped her lips. "Maybe the company would help quell you."

"Then you needn't sleep in a chair," Morgana objected, matter-of-factly.

Gwen smiled into Morgana's shoulder. "It's a nice chair."

"You are… considerably less fumbling when you're half awake, Guinevere," Morgana looped an arm around Gwen's waist. "You're never too nervous to speak, I mean."

"I'm tired." The maid was slumped over, her face buried in Morgana's shoulder, curly mane flattened to one side. She hummed at the comforting sensation of Morgana rubbing her back.

They stayed in silence for a time, no sound emanating from the square below. It was eerie, that silence. It was as though the square was frozen in time, and neither Gwen nor Morgana were possessed to speak and break the spell. The only apparent sound was that of nearby trees rustling in the wind.

"Gwen," Morgana ventured softly, unable to tell whether or not the girl had already fallen asleep.

Her breathing was deep and heavy, "Hmm?"

"Do you remember, when we were children, how we used to play hide and go seek in the woods? And how we could never properly play the game, because the quiet in the woods was much too peaceful to shout in?"

"Mmm," Gwen replied.

"How did we ever find each other, then?" She discontinued drawing circles on Gwen's back.

It took a moment for the maid to draw her face out of Morgana's clothes, "We just knew, I guess."

Morgana considered this. Her eyes were cast at the window, and the moonlight lit them pale as her skin. She spent a moment breathing, and went on, "Gwen?"

"Mmm," Gwen replied.

"If you don't want to go home, then you don't have to hide from me." Morgana turned her face to the crown of Gwen's head. The maid groggily lifted her face to meet eyes with her Lady. "This is your home as much as mine. This is your bed as much as mine. Hmm?" She raised a hand to brush Gwen's cheek, and the maid's eyelids fluttered.

"I think," she began quietly, "that I was dreaming about you. Not as though you're a nightmare to me. Oh," she stammered, "It's not as though I though you were thinking I was insulting you, it's jus that the way I said that… No, I wasn't having a nightmare because of you-"

Morgana blinked. Her eyes were shadowed when they were turned away from the window, and they glowed jade as the silks in Gwen's dream.

"But… I think… I think I dreamt of you."

Gwen, more awake than before, watched as Morgana's eyes transformed from worried to endearing. The edges of her lips rose into a pleasant smile, but her face was gaunt with tiredness. She pressed her smile into a willowy kiss on Gwen's forehead.

"This is all talk for morning," she chided. Gracefully, she hopped out of bed and padded to the other side, leaving Gwen an entire space for herself. Morgana slipped under the sheets and waited for her handmaid to follow. Once settled in, she sighed, "Goodnight, Gwen."

Gwen returned the acknowledgment, but laid still on her side, back to Morgana, and waited for a long while until she heard the other girl's breath slow and deepen. She did not think that she enjoyed dreaming much anymore.

Gwen traced a finger along the bewitched spot on her forehead, marvelling at how such a brief, feathery connection could create such an imprint. She was fully awake now, eyes wide and breathing shallow. She was facing the window, and watched the moon through the glass pane until her eyelids grew heavy again. She mused on how it looked pale and round as Morgana's eyes. She thought of it as she drifted to sleep.


End file.
